Double sided printing on VUTEK QS3200

[thanson]

I work in the PrePress dept. of a shop that has a Vutek QS3200. Our double sided prints on a substrate does not line up. In some cases it is almost a 1/4" off! I find this completely unacceptable. The operator is either unable or unwilling to find an acceptable solution. His solution is to add more bleed. I find this unacceptable, because the back side will not be centered (disastrous if there is a border, or if it is a profile). Has anyone else encountered this problem, or have a solution for it?

Thanks

 

[Champion]

Mia

Mia

Well if you are dealing with thick material it may be cut at a bias or out of square .
Having a tape measure handy helps ,set margin accordingly.
You may be slipping .
If so a small tab of double sided tape will help or placing a 1 foot square of the material are working with beside your work piece will do to increase vacuum.

 

[costeastefan]

We achive a perfect registration

We achive a perfect registration

It's all about the machine setup. It can be done from Vutek user interface.

 

[bblacc]

vutek doulbe sided printing.....

vutek doulbe sided printing.....

I know how to do it...i used to work for freeman. used to print 70 to 140 double sided 6x15's in a day and a half. file has to be set up right. doesnt involve bleed. i have a [email protected] in need a job...

 

[stealey]

same problem

same problem

i have a qs3200 and it was fine for about a year then the second side of printing started to be off alot, to get around it we added a box around each file so we knew where the start was going to be and just measured before we did the second side, still no idea why it goes off though

 

[benjomeng]

look at your fence settings. usually i run a grid of 1" blocks with a 1" margin on left and top. Measure your print then add or subtract from the fence settings or sheet input settings accordingly

 

[Offroad64]

Sounds to me like your offsets are wrong for your fence right and left and maybe sheet input. The easy way I have found to set them up is to print a simple keylined box maybe
6" square. What you want to happen is have the line on the leading edge and the right edge of the material. If it prints too far in on the leading edge you want to subtract from the sheet input and if it prints too far in on the right side you will have to add to the fence right number. Once you have it printing on the edge mirror you image and set your fence left. The only was to do double sided prints and have line up with out any bleed is to have a front file and a back that is set up mirrored then mirror the back at the printer. I use this method and get the images to line up within 1/32".

 

[alstratton]

The method Offroad64 uses is exactly the best way to do it, after you have checked and adjusted your offsets, as has been mentioned and finally the perimeter box on the very edge of your layout also helps you to see how well you are backing up the 2 sides. If it's roll material you are printing, then have prepress create a file , say 2 inches wide with a 6pt vertical rule of 100" long on the right edge. Print this on your belt in a color that will be visible, and keep printing it until it totally covers the entire wrap of the belt, then use that to help you square your roll media loads.

 

[Graphicspecialist]

I Vutek GS2000 and a LX3 PRO and I also have registration issues. Below are the specifics with the following solutions. Issue: When printing a 4'x8' sheet of 1/8 plexi or similar,

The GS2000 is 80" wide so I run 4x8's or bigger in portrait orientation. After about 3-4' the sheet begins to wander or skew after 3-4'. At best we end up with about 3/8" offset although it gets better with lighter materials such as ultraboard or gator. With the LX3, I don't have that issue since the printer is wide enough to run it through landscape. However, both printers have issues with roll media wandering at least an inch every 10' feet.

Here are some solutions we have used to mitigate these issues:

• For 1/8" or thicker Plexi/Acrylic/diebond, etc. we zero point the material on the fence and butt left edge of the material to the left Rail. This gets us to within a 1/16" offset which is acceptable but this method cant be used for thinner substrates since it would cause the material to buckle and crash the head. We print the back side on the right side of the machines in mirror mode using the same method.

• Using cardstock on the leading edge and side of material seems to help improve the vacuum and thus cause less wandering. I set my vacuum to about 70% for 1/8" plexi.

• For Roll printing, We just make sure that the roll is the same distance from the edge of the belt on both the front and back sides. Also, I load the material without the vacuum and put a couple of turns on the takeup reel before I do a scan media. If the print does begin to wander I usual just redo the scan media as many times as I can before the media goes off the edge - usually about 20' or so.

We already had one efi tech say that this was beyond the machines capabilities. However, in doing some research online. I have found a document from Efi stating that perfect back to front registration can be achieved only in sheet mode although it doesn't specify up to how large a print it can perfectly register - The tech told us it is only 4' since their in-feed tests are that size as well.

-Hope this helps!